Saturday night talk shows in Spain: no centrist option in sight

Saturday at 21:30: two talk shows, two narratives and no middle ground

Saturday, 21:30. Two channels switched on and a TV set that in many living rooms already serves as little more than a lamp. On La 2 de TVE, Malas Lenguas Noche kicks off; on La Sens, La Sens Xplica. Same format, same slot, same night and, above all, the same suspicion: that neither is the talk show half of Spain feels like watching. The most repeated complaint in the middle of the pre-election campaign is not that there are too many political analysis programmes, but that the one that is missing is precisely the one that isn't there.

Why is there no perceived centrist talk show on Saturday nights?

Because both offerings are read as two sides of the same story. "Curious that there's no centrist or right-wing talk show on Saturday nights," sums up one of the most repeated formulations; both, adds the same voice, are unbearable. Neither is perceived as neutral in the week's prime family viewing slot, and that is the underlying problem: they are not competing for the viewer across the aisle, they are competing for the one who already agrees.

The diagnosis has substance. Some argue, with considerable reluctance, that the public channel's show was created precisely because part of the audience found La Sens too skewed to the right. Others accuse the private channel of the opposite, of indoctrinating viewers. When two opposing accusations coexist without friction in the same conversation, what is failing is not the schedule: it is the viewers' trust.

The audience shift from La Sens to TVE that nobody measures

The most widespread theory is that La Sens has lost a good part of its nighttime audience to TVE, and that this shift explains the polarization better than any editorial. "It's creepy to think that La Sens has lost most of its audience, who have gone off to watch TVE," notes one of the most graphic messages. There are no figures to hand. None are needed either to confirm that Saturday night has become a competition between audiences already convinced.

Underneath, concrete politics looms: we are in the pre-campaign period and current affairs rule. Watching these shows is then justified as fieldwork. You have to know how the other side thinks, the argument goes, with the same logic as studying the opponent before a match.

Watching TV like someone with a gramophone: the audience that switches off

The other half of the phenomenon is desertion. "Watching TV is soooo 1999," declares one viewer; "I'm from the 21st century, not the past 20th when TV was watched out of habit and inertia," adds another. The switched-off set, the recorded series, video on demand or simply going out. The real competitor of both talk shows is not the other talk show: it is the black screen and the remote on the table.

That abandonment has an obvious commercial cost and a less visible editorial consequence. Those who no longer switch on don't vote with the remote, but they don't get informed in that studio either. The political debate is played out before an ever smaller and, by the same token, more militant audience.

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And while all that was happening, something else was competing on Saturday night: Real Madrid were playing. The match, refereeing controversy included, took over the conversations in that same slot. Perhaps the right question is not which of the two talk shows is worse, but how much audience is left to recruit when the real opponent wears a shirt number, shorts and has no opinion on politics.